Meeting the Challenges, and Realizing the Promises, of Higher Education Community Engagement

1. Meeting the Challenges, and Realizing the Promises, of Higher Education Community Engagement Randy Stoecker

2. The Promise • To students: • Educational enhancement • Career advancement • Moral/personal development • To communities: • Filling of resource gaps • Allyship for equity • Promotion of justice

3. The Challenges • Lack of outcomes, or negative outcomes, for communities. • Partial problematic outcomes for students • Reinforcement of stereotypes • Resistance to “required volunteerism” • Poverty tourism • Resume volunteerism

4. Consequent Questions About the Promise • Can we simultaneously educate students and fill community resource gaps? • Can we support students’ career prospects and promote equity for marginalized communities? • Can we support students’ moral development and support justice for marginalized communities?

5. Dialectical Answers • The more education students get from communities, the less practical benefit communities get from students. • The more that community work is used to enhance students’ visibility and status, the less visible the community and its assets are. • The more we support justice for marginalized communities, the more students may question their own privilege and/or ours.

6. Unpacking: educating students and benefiting communities • What is a community: • Geography • Identity • Sum+ • Collectivity • What are community benefits: • Problem solving • Capacity building • How we engage students in communities: • Individual service • Decontextualized activities • Minimal mentoring • How we prepare students: • Lack of training in specific issue work • Lack of training in community work Consequence: unintended side effects

7. Unpacking: Building up Students and Building Equity for Communities • How we build up communities • Taking power from professionals • Eliminating one-way “knowledge transfer” • Dismantling hierarchies • How we prepare students: • To become professionals • To transmit and apply knowledge • To accommodate hierarchies Consequence: The privileging of charity models

8. Unpacking: Student Moral Development and Community Justice • Community justice • Restorative justice • Change, not charity • Collective action • Political analysis • Student socialization • Punitive justice • Charity, not change • Individual achievement • Depoliticized mystification Consequence: sewing confusion and cynicism

9. Toward a new promise • A mission statement for higher ed community engagement: • To build community capacity… • To create social change… • By facilitating community access to our knowledge resources, including faculty, staff, and students

10. Unpacking the mission statement • What is capacity? • Ability to find and keep volunteers (rather than higher ed supplying them) • Ability to develop and deploy knowledge resources • Ability to be heard and understood • Ability to plan and act • What is change? • Full distribution of opportunities and benefits • Full distribution of decision-making power • What is facilitating access? • Customizing higher ed to fit community priorities • Connecting communities to higher ed resources (science shops)

11. A theoretical Framework for the Mission Statement Inspired by Michel Foucault

12. Diverging from Dominant practices • Project-based, not hours-based • Skill-based, not volunteer-based • Outcome-based, not output-based • Change-centered, not SL/CBR-centered • Community targeted, not individual targeted • Commitment to the project, not the agency • Commitment to the constituency, not the agency • Focus on contributing, not leading

13. A New Ethical Base • Promote active and representative participation toward enabling all community members to meaningfully influence the decisions that affect their lives. • Engage community members in learning about and understanding community issues, and the economic, social, environmental, political, psychological, and other impacts associated with alternative courses of action. • Incorporate the diverse interests and cultures of the community in the community development process; and disengage from support of any effort that is likely to adversely affect the disadvantaged members of a community. • Work actively to enhance the leadership capacity of community members, leaders, and groups within the community. • Be open to using the full range of action strategies to work toward the long-term sustainability and well being of the community. Source: Principles of good practice, Community Development Society, http://www.comm-dev.org/

14. Putting it into action—in the community 1. Find constituency-led efforts... ...with community change goals... ...or help them develop goals... ...and identify projects... ...that can help achieve goals. 2. Find higher ed resources... ...that can support the projects... ...and mobilize those resources... ...to do the projects... ...to achieve the goals.

15. Putting it into practice--In the institution • Curricular flexibility • Tenure and promotion criteria • Resources for community organizing and community technical experts • Deployment of science shop strategy • Training for faculty and staff in community dynamics, popular education • Expansion of classroom-based civics education, issue education

16. Putting it into practice--In the classroom • Projects, not hours • A limited number of projects • Projects developed by faculty and community group before class starts • Students apply for projects • Students receive appropriate training to do projects • Technical expert mentoring (either faculty or community)